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Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer

How can one resolve the issue of reliability and validity in the context of sociological research on inequality?

  • UPSC 2017
  • Research Methods and Analysis

Pierre Bourdieu's call to turn sociology's own analytic instruments back on the researcher herself anchors this answer: studying inequality is never a neutral technical exercise, because the researcher's own location within a hierarchy of class, caste, and educational capital shapes what she notices, measures, and is even willing to call "inequality" in the first place.

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions.

What the full answer covers

  • The Contested Operationalisation of "Inequality" Itself
  • Social-Desirability Bias and the Reliability of Self-Reported Data
  • Access Barriers and the Representativeness of the Sample
  • Measurement Invariance: Borrowed Instruments and Local Meaning
  • Resolution: Triangulation Across Data, Method, and Investigator
  • Reflexivity as a Corrective for the Objectifying Gaze

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